


Il falò delle vanità

by More_night



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: $1k wines, Armpit Sex, Bonfires, Drinking, Excessive Drinking, Gen, M/M, Renaissance, Sharing a Bed, Vanities, general talk of mutual destruction, probably too much fire, thick plaid-patterned blankets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 11:17:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8100397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/More_night/pseuds/More_night
Summary: Three times Will and Hannibal got drunk together.





	1. 1.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mostlyawful](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mostlyawful/gifts).



> _Il falò delle vanità_ is Italian for the bonfire of vanities.
> 
> This was the story for my Big Bang partner, [mostlyawful](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Mostlyawful/pseuds/Mostlyawful), ([sammehdraws](http://sammehdraws.tumblr.com/) on tumblr), who was kind enough to suffer my whining about my being late throughout the whole ordeal and for that they deserve my utmost consideration and all my affection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place in season 1, post-Fromage because it's when the blooming of love happens.

It was hard to call it a party. First, it was too official for that. Senator Dunmore from Minesotta would attend, because of Will’s role in solving the Hobbs case. Senator Kelly would be there as well because his office had contributed to the BAU’s funding through a bill passed in 2008. Jack had sent them the list of all guests by e-mail. Will had looked at it on his laptop, in the kitchen, with Rockie sleeping, her head on his feet. It had seemed far away, in both space and time, at the moment.

Second, it involved too much socialization to be a party. In a party, Will could have just stayed back and drunk. Better yet, he could have not attended.

It was held in Quantico. Will had brought his tuxedo in its plastic dry cleaning bag. He put it on in his office and walked out, bow tie hanging untied around his neck. He could stop in the restroom to tie it in front of the mirror.

There were some guests nearby already, a flow of black and white with the occasional chic gown and naked back. He spotted Dr. Lecter and Jack Crawford and ducked in the hall that led to the bathroom.

Even in front of the wide, absent mirrors, his footsteps echoing in the empty space, all stalls void of anyone, Will felt watched already. There was a faint buzz of voices coming through the door.

He steadied himself and focused on his bow tie. Cross both ends, the longer one over the shorter one. Then hold the longer one while folding the shorter one to obtain the bow form.

Will was bringing the longer end down on the shorter horizontal one to shape the tie of the bow, when Hannibal stepped in. Will’s eyes darted to him in the mirror. He straightened his neck. “Don’t comment,” he said.

Hannibal bowed his head and turned to the mirror, feigning to adjust his own bow tie. There was a slight glimmer to the material it was made of. “I would never.”

Come to think of it, Hannibal’s entire tuxedo seemed to have a shimmer in the fabric, nothing obvious, just a glint, when the light was right. “I didn’t know you’d attend,” Will said. It wasn’t entirely true. He had suspected Hannibal would be there. It made sense. And he hadn’t really read through the whole list of guests.

“Jack was just telling me that, if the BAU is to get more funding from Congress, it should appear to have as many consultants as possible,” Hannibal explained.

Will had finished with his bow tie. The left part was minutely bigger than the right one. He went to his cufflinks. “This isn’t hard for you,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

Hannibal didn’t deny. He turned to Will and examined him for a moment. “How do you feel?”

Shrugging, Will gave a brief smile. “My head aches insistently. My stomach doesn’t feel that right. I feel… wobbly. Like a brick wall that’s begun to crumble.” He sighed. “Jack will parade me out there, won’t he?”

A fine smile came to Hannibal’s lips and he blinked in assent. “You’re a prized asset,” he said. “Some would feel valued.”

Will huffed. “I feel more valued when people aren’t looking at me.”

“People are looking at you when you save lives. Even symbolically, you are the object of their admiration.”

“Symbolically is the important part,” Will said.

Hannibal kept scrutinizing him. He reached for his own forehead, inviting Will to brush out the strand of curly hair that hung down and caught the top of his glasses. Will did so.

Beverly peeked in the door. “Is this a boys’ meeting?”

“You _are_ in the boys’ bathroom,” Will told her. “Very eighth grade.” She smiled in appreciation and wriggled her eyebrows before stepping in.

She wore a violet gown, so dark the valleys of the folds seemed ink black. It hung over her right shoulder and bared the left one. “Eighth grade were the good days.”

Will searched what to do with his hands, put them in his pockets, smiled nervously. “Christ, I want your life.”

“I suppose we are expected?” Hannibal asked her.

Katz nodded. “Jack’s getting nervous.” She gestured to Will’s tuxedo. “I won a bet.”

“You bet I owned a tuxedo?”

“No, I bet you’d wear it without the use of force.”

“Physical force isn’t the only kind,” Will said. “How much did you bet?”

Beverly waved with her small purse. The bright white contrasted with her dress, like the moon in the night sky. “One drink.”

“Drinks are on the house.”

She grinned. “Price didn’t know that,” she said. “Speaking of which, you either look like someone who needs a drink or someone who really shouldn’t be drinking…”

Will pushed his glasses up his nose. “The first one.”

“In small dosage, alcohol does wonders for social anxiety,” Hannibal pointed out as they started to head for the door.

“Dosage increasing, I might eventually behave like a normal person for ten minutes,” Will said. “Then, the depressive effects will grow and I will get even duller than my usual.”

Hannibal cocked his head. This close, it was impossible to tell if his tuxedo was a rich black or the darkest indigo blue. “Of all the words I could choose to describe you, dull doesn’t come to mind,” he said.

Will closed his eyes. He had already taken his share of aspirin and the headache still pounded near his right temple. “Please don’t describe me to your friends.”

“I promise not to.” Hannibal leaned slightly closer. “You’re my secret.”

Just as Beverly reached the door, it burst open and Jack’s face looked at them. He seemed constricted in his dark suit. He breathed out loudly, glaring at everyone in turn and stopping on Will. “Well,” he said. “This way.” He held the door open with one arm and invited them to join the murmur of voices that filled the corridors and rooms beyond with the other.

 

* * *

 

Quantico had many lecture halls and conference rooms large enough to welcome receptions of all kinds. This was one of the rooms in which trainees would take part in the yearly shooting competition. The targets and stands had been removed, even if the slots and lines drawn in tape were still in the floor. Will couldn’t see them in the mid-darkness, but could feel the texture changing sometimes under the soles of his shoes.

The walls had been covered in heavy black drapes, to mask the concrete and – Will thought he recalled – the tall patch of white near the ceiling in the eastward corner, where the sand had seeped out from the cement, under the pressure of infiltrated water, coming from the underground parking above them.

A small stage had been set up at one end of the room. It had yet to be used, the brown lectern sitting in quiet and slough.

Movements that seemed self-generated animated the crowd. Suddenly everyone knew who to talk to. Like ships on rivers, brought to harbor without the need to ever adjust the sails or paddle among the pulling currents and threatening waves. In a corner, a chamber quartet played a rendition of the Brandenburg concertos. Along a wall were tables, covered in white, rich cloth, with elements of a buffet on it. Will saw pyramids of _petits fours_ and plates of scattered tiny pastries. He glimpsed Beverly at the bar.

Jack’s fingers went to Will’s elbow as soon as they entered the room and didn’t let go until he had presented Will to the two senators, his three direct superiors in the Bureau’s hierarchy and the representative for the OIG, a thin woman with a slim suit, by the name of Prurnell. She eyed Will with her lips curling into a mix of disbelief and analysis, focusing on him the more Jack described Will’s successes. Garrett Jacob Hobbs, the rescue of his daughter Abigail, the later capture of Gordon Stammets-... Will’s ears began to shake with the roar of his blood. _The floor rocked and, in Will, the fear increased that it would break, too thin to hold him. He would fall, feet first into the penetrating abyss and, yanked back up by the flow of water, he would only be able to hit his fists against the transparent ice, staring at the legs and feet of the people above. Jack would look down at him, curiously, almost amused. But the fear quit, as suddenly as it had come, and Will drowned, unafraid, heavy enough that he should prefer sleep to life. In the distance, the stag leaned down to touch his nose to the ice._

There was a tremor in his chest, something quick and unseen. And he came out of the vivid hallucination and into the room. Kade Prurnell’s eyes were still on him. Jack told her of the two most recent findings Will had helped the BAU with: Devon Silvestri and Tobias Budge.

“How does it feel to be such an asset, Mr. Graham?” she asked. “Do you miss your classroom?”

Will knew of the small smile he should give, but it came a bit too late. “I’m…” He licked his lips. Somewhere, fifteen feet away, as he conversed with the senator, Hannibal cast a glance in his direction. The gaze held for a split second and then Will was alone again. “I’m glad I can help,” he said.

Prurnell leaned on the side to say something to Jack, but Will had stopped listening. Around them, the room began to animate. Groups disbanded to reform. Heads and eyes went upward. Attention focused on the stage, at a point over Will’s shoulder. The lighting shifted to plunge the audience in darkness. “Excuse me,” Will said. He wasn’t sure if Jack or Prurnell had heard him and he stepped away, making his way to the bar, set up at the end of the buffet tables.

“Bourbon. Neat,” he said to the woman dressed in crisp black.

His drink was set in front of him. The speech started. The Senator from Minesotta started to talk about families and values.

“Champagne. Veuve cliquot, if you have it,” Hannibal’s voice said beside him, slightly hushed.

“Are you scheduled to speak?” Will asked as they moved away from the bar, their glasses in hand.

Hannibal shook his head. Around the pale golden of the sparkling wine, his fingers seemed hefty and gray. “But Jack did say he would mention my work, as well as yours.”

Will sighed and his answer – _that he didn’t feel he was working, only that he was hanging from a thread thinner and thinner, his hand extended into the pit to catch someone who had already fallen_ – left him. Kade Prurnell was coming their way, sipping from her martini.

A round of applause fired. The first speech was finished. The whispers of the crowd started anew. “Hello again, Mr. Graham,” she said. She gave Hannibal a nod. “Dr. Hannibal Lecter, I think? Kade Prurnell.”

“Indeed.” Hannibal returned her nod. “Pleased to meet you Ms. Prurnell. Jack introduced you as his superior. Do you work within the FBI?”

Kade Prurnell’s smile was friendly, but distant. “No, I’m with the Inspector General's Office. Me and Jack have known each other a long time.” She turned to Will. His fingers were wrapped around his glass and hid the fact that it was already empty. Around them, people ruffled as the short break turned out to be longer than expected: Senator Kelly had run into a journalist while taking pictures at the entrance of the room and only asked them to be patient a little longer, said the young man on the stage. “Jack mentioned that one of you is the other one’s unofficial therapist. Which one is it?”

Will looked down. Hannibal answered before he could. “Being a psychiatrist myself, I admit I found it hard to seek support and council, but the cases we are required to investigate can be disturbing.” He turned to Will. “Will’s assistance has been of great significance.”

Still, Will watched the bottom of his glass. Prurnell eyed them both. “I don’t believe you,” she told Hannibal.

Hannibal cocked an eyebrow. “I tried,” he said to Will.

“Thank you,” Will said, a little too emphatically for sarcasm not to show through.

All three of them went silent as Senator Kelly’s speech started. It was a bit longer than the first. Kelly was aiming for re-election, Will figured out, when the middle-aged woman started listing the donations, their amounts and the corresponding projects she had worked on for the state. In the middle of it, Hannibal’s fingers came to rest on his wrist, nimble and feathery, and he smoothly removed Will’s empty tumbler from his hand. Then he vanished into the crowd to return minutes later with refills for both of them.

When the speech ended, a short intermission started. The orchestra played Vivaldi and people gathered again.

Prurnell sipped from her martini and turned to Will. “I confess I have trouble understanding what it is exactly that you do, Mr. Graham,” she said. “Jack says you have an exceptional talent as a profiler, but I’d gathered profilers weren’t in the field.”

Will swallowed and tried to focus on the smudge of a fingertip at the top of his glasses. “Some of us go into the field sometimes, when the crime scenes are difficult to recreate or describe,” he said. “And it’s not really a talent. It’s more like a susceptibility of the mind.”

“Your mind is susceptible to the one of those you profile?” She took the toothpick to slip the olive in her mouth. “Or is it the other way around?”

“Killers are not so different from us, Ms. Prurnell,” Hannibal said. His champagne flute was empty. Will downed the rest of his bourbon. “Most people find it hard to grasp the substance of their motivation, only because their actions are extraordinary, or uncommon in scale and violence. Will doesn’t.”

“And once you think like them, how do you use that?” Prurnell asked Will.

“I don’t… use it,” Will said. “I expose the intents as patterns and the desires as plans and then…” He didn’t know what to do with his hands. “We catch them.” He had to set his glass down on a table behind him so he could slip his fingers in his pockets. At that moment, the desire to be unseen and remain unnoticed and peaceful instantaneously transformed into the wish to repulse and shove away. “It’s like reading body language. Like I know you don’t really want to be here tonight. You tried to get that information about me from Jack, but he wouldn’t tell you. You want this to put it in a report and then leave.”

The woman’s eyes had widened slightly. Will could almost see his words reflected in the irises’ shine.

“Will,” Hannibal warned.

“You’re a bureaucrat,” Will went on. He nodded to the stage. “You despise the obscenity of politics just as much as you scorn the rough and tumble of field operatives. You don’t care for the how or the why of the things we do here. You care that things are done. You don’t think or deliberate: you need and you execute. But you always get what you want, because you’ve always come out on top, haven’t you?”

He stopped to breathe. Kade Prurnell’s face had turned into a mask of dismay, bordering on rage. She seemed determined on not answering, but her eyes didn’t let his go. Will met her gaze to let her discern how true the words had been. He saw them reach down far into her mind.

Then he turned away and left. As he made his way out, the audience applauded the chief of the BAU, Jack Crawford, coming to the stage.

 

* * *

 

Will was not fifteen steps away, that Kade Prurnell was met with a colleague. The man greeted her with warmth and connivance. She blinked a few times, eyes still narrowed in Hannibal’s direction, then placed her empty glass near Will’s own on the table with a tight thud and moved closer to the stage with her acquaintance.

The violence in Will’s eyes had softly simmered, never quite honestly coming to a boil, still much held back. Jack’s words around him – _it’s strange to be on this stage alone while nothing I do could be done without the collaborative work of_ – Hannibal followed Will’s path through the crowd.

He had taken the second door at the end of the room. The smell of his aftershave was easy to follow, the strength of clove drowning all other scents, the aldehydes employed instead of alcohol leaving a distinct bite in Hannibal’s nose.

Will had gone to his right. People became rarer. Hannibal passed a few members of the catering staff, joining the main room with platters and piles of white, paper plates.

One of the smaller classrooms had been converted into a micro-cellar for the duration of the evening. Its desks and chairs had been pushed to the side and refrigerators for wine and food lined in their place. Through the glass in the door, Hannibal could see Will exploring one of the refrigerators with eyes still unsettled. He had taken his glasses off and slipped them in between the buttons of his shirt. His bow tie was undone. He searched for liquor, Hannibal supposed, but they must keep it at the bar itself.

Will opened one of the refrigerators’ transparent door and began to sift through the bottles of wine in the racks. Hannibal couldn’t identify the labels from where he stood, but some of them were visibly high-end. The profiler slipped a bottle out and Hannibal entered the room, waiting for the closing of the refrigerator to mask the noise of his opening the door.

Will turned around, bottle in hand, and jerked when he saw Hannibal. Their eyes met for a time. The violence in Will’s was receding, just as mist dissipates when the sun comes up. Its humidity remains, clinging to the clothes, the stones, the grass, and whenever the night comes back, it rises again.

“Château Margaux,” Hannibal noted, with a glance at the bottle’s shape. The writing was masked by Will’s hand. “Which year is it?”

Will seemed tired, or as if the world was weary of him. “1989,” he said. “Plainly put, it’s the oldest I saw.”

“An impressive budget on the FBI’s part,” Hannibal commented, moving closer to the refrigerator. It was a Liebherr, a recent model, dual-temperatures, altered to be portable. Maybe this was a Senator’s reserve, transported here for the awaited after-party. “What’s your plan?”

Will’s eyes went inside, his fingers were at his neck, undoing the bow tie. “Find somewhere quiet to drink this alone. Anticipate Jack’s wrath.”

“Given that it could be anticipated.” The dim lights at the end of the shelves projected the glow of the bottles on them, spots of yellow, dark red and earth green. Hannibal noticed a brighter Château Margaux label, near the door of the refrigerator. “That is another Château Margaux. 2005. The best vintage currently on the market.”

Turning to lay eyes on the bottle, Will found it unremarkable, with a white label in a recent design showing the facade of a manor in gold lines. “Do you want it?”

With a fine smile, Hannibal took the bottle from its shelf. Will held his bottle by the neck and examined the other man carefully, wondering what was going on exactly. Hannibal cradled his bottle against his side, his palm against the bottom, the neck in the crook of his elbow. They were at a good distance from the party, enough to hear the subtle variations in volume and measure the progress of the evening on its course. Jack’s speech had ended sometime ago. Outside, the slow sways of popular waltzes had started. The speeches had ended. The time had come for dancing, fund-collecting and refreshments.

They slipped out of the room unseen and headed down the corridor until they reached the elevator. Will’s fingers hovered over the buttons bringing them two levels down, in the sub-basement, the labs, the morgue, death and its long claws. Hannibal stepped forward and pressed the button of the highest floor. “Jack wants to bury you in cadavers and maggots until you can’t see or smell anything else than putrid decay.” He turned to Will and said, softly. “Let us take you into the stars of above.”

The elevator’s doors closed with a curt ring. Will was running his thumb along the thin, old metal paper around his bottle’s cork. “On a scale of one to ten, how evil was it?”

Hannibal adjusted his bow tie with his wobbly reflection in the unpolished steel as a guide. “Seven,” he said. “I’m convinced you can be much eviler, given the opportunity.”

Will closed his eyes and sighed softly. His amused smile came on its own, curling his lips from the inside. He didn’t see Hannibal’s teeth-showing grin flare in response.

 

* * *

 

The ninth floor was darkened, although some lights turned on by motion detection in the classrooms and offices they passed. They crossed the corridor and found the stairs. It led them to the roof above. With a twist to a corner of his mouth, Hannibal took a business card someone had given him and folded it four times, lodging it in the door’s handle’s latch to prevent it from locking up behind them.

Will had walked to the end of the roof. He looked down at the parking below. The night was clear and the starlight sharp and far. In the distance, there were the shapes of the three dormitories where trainees lived, with dots of light in the windows. Then only wild, land and woods, with some clearing for the tracks. It was cold, but not enough to warrant wearing a coat.

Hannibal walked to him and sat down on the large low metallic wall that served as a railing. His hair was skewed in the wind that came in bursts at this height.

“Why are you here?” Will asked him. “I mean, with me. Why leave the party?”

“On the one hand, this evening is particularly disappointing,” Hannibal started, placing his bottle down beside him with a clink. “On the other, you seemed like you could require company.” 

“I never require company,” Will said, stiffly.

“I wasn’t implying I was here in professional obligation.”

Will slid his undone bow tie off his neck and put it in his pocket. “I know.”

Hannibal watched Will avoid the topic by rummaging his pockets. “You didn’t take a corkscrew with you?”

“Why?” Will found a pen in his jacket. He unwrapped the bottle’s cork. “I actually grew up thinking this was how it was meant to be done.” He took the pen’s cap off and planted the tip in the bottle’s cork.

Hannibal watched him force the pen’s plastic in the soft wood, then twist it and push down until the cork descended in the bottle with a pop. There was a quiet splash when it hit the wine.

“Often, you're the one who doesn't seem to need anyone,” Will said, handing out the pen.

Considering that question for a moment, Hannibal took the pen, face unreadable, the softness changed into something murkier. “What do you think of me, Will?” He inserted the pen into the wood so smoothly it seemed to slide in. “Be honest.” The cork went down in the wine.

Will made eye contact with him briefly, long enough that Hannibal saw that he considered a truthful answer. It was there, behind the irises, dangling and squeaking. “You do like to socialize.” He frowned. “Or you’re good enough at it that it doesn’t matter if you like it. And no one wonders what goes on behind the glorious canopies of words.”

The slivers of a roar that had begun to settle inside Hannibal quieted down suddenly. Will turned away to sip from his bottle. Hannibal took his eyes to the horizon and drank as well. It was regrettable that he could not smell in the aromas from the cork, but the shake of it against the bottle’s neck provided oxygenation.

In his throat, the wine met the snugness that had begun to gather at the top of his stomach.

 

* * *

 

They drank slowly, sitting side by side on the railing, some three feet between them. Below, in the parking lot, voices came up. Sometimes the wind came up carrying cigarette smoke.

“Did you speak to Alana?” Hannibal said.

“No.” Will swallowed his sip and ran his hands over his face. “I called her and I hung up before she picked up. Did you?”

The other man nodded. His bow tie was still done, his jacket still buttoned. “She called me. It was a professional call. She wanted to discuss a young patient. She didn’t speak of anything else.”

“Did you tell her I told you that-…” 

“Of course not. I couldn’t.”

Will turned fully to him. “When we talk about cases in your office, I’m not your patient,” he said, quietly. “When I tell you the bland stuff, our conversations are subject to professional secrecy?” It was not as threatening as it sounded. Will seemed insistent to determine the boundaries of their relationship. At the root of the force that set Hannibal in motion, the desire was coiled to dilute these limits and walls, but its goal remained abstract to him, even now.

“Do you think I refer to you as a friend only to prompt confidence from you, knowing you would object to standard therapeutic context?” Hannibal said.

Will had placed his bottle down and ran his thumb along the neck. “At first, I thought that,” he said. “But not for long.”

For a moment, they returned to the silence they had shared up to now. The only sound was the one of their sips and swallows, liquid going down their throats like waves coming to shore.

“This is good,” Will said, eyes cast down to his bottle. The wine had left somewhat dark traces on his lips.

“It is.” Hannibal held out his bottle. “To the astute plan that salvaged a bitter evening.” Will raised his bottle and they touched with a low cling.

Each of them had drunk a little more than half of their bottles. There was an easy unrest in their limbs and they didn’t feel the prick of the cold with the same strength as before. In Hannibal’s mind, the thoughts had begun to arrange and float, more musical than linear. Will’s features were slightly more open than they usually were. Like he considered trusting the world, even for a moment.

Above their heads, the stars had begun to cloud over. It was dark enough that they saw the other mostly through the whiteness of their dress shirt, teeth and eyes. The soft light of departing cars from below entered the night from time to time.

“Bury me.” Will said, his head tilted back, his closed eyelids to the stars. “You said Jack wanted to bury me.”

Hannibal tilted his head. “He has been somewhat consistent in doing that. Even figuratively.”

“Are you implying he’s aware of it?”

“In conversations with me, Jack has often described you using mechanical or animal terminology,” Hannibal said, only stretching the truth as he would flex a muscle. “He considers you to be a tool.”

Will brought the bottle to his lips. “I know how Jack thinks of me.”

“Yet you find the image of burial violent.”

“Not violent. But inappropriate.” Will’s breath came out in a thickening mist as the night advanced. It surrounded his head with a halo, dotted with stars. “I don’t know what’s to be elevated in me.”

Hannibal swallowed around his sip of wine. The harmony of the taste had started to become lost on him, in favor of the light intoxication that wrapped him into its blanketing arms. “You trust Jack to use you for a good purpose?” he said. “What about yourself? What would you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Literally?” 

Will sighed. It was short and contained. “The only thing my mind makes me good at is not a good thing.”

“Understanding why people kill?” Hannibal gave a light smile. It disappeared behind the bottle’s opening. “Are you of the mind that motivations of murderers should remain a mystery, then?”

Will placed his bottle down and dropped his eyes to his fingers. His knuckles were still scarred and red from the extraction of bricks from his fireplace’s chimney at home. “Did Jack show you my file?”

“I received a copy of it when I was to complete my evaluation authorizing your return to the field.” 

“Did you read it?”

Hannibal had done so with attention and care. Along with official information (grades in the Academy, career status, physical test results), it read as a series of behavioral observations and notes that spoke more of what the FBI expected its employees to show and to hide than of Will Graham himself. Will Graham was hidden in between the tiny lines and round letters, in the whites of the page. “Not attentively. Discussions are more revealing,” he said. Will smiled, only half-bitterly. “What should I recall?”

“1987. Greenville.”

Hannibal frowned. “Nothing that early was mentioned.”

Will found the horizon again, somewhere above the trees, where its blurred line was puffing with dark-blue and depthless night. “We lived in a trailer park out of town, near the river.” He took another sip. Wine glistened on his lips. “One of our neighbors died. There was a police line but I saw the body before they could cover it.”

“How had he died?”

“Knife to the chest and throat. The police thought it was a drug deal gone sour.” He tightened his grip on his bottle. His voice flew as the memory came back to him, wings spreading onto thin air. Hannibal had never before seen Will’s mind so transparent to itself. “I told them that it wasn’t a drug deal.”

Hannibal blinked slowly. “You had no forensics knowledge…”

Shaking his head, Will went on. “I didn’t even know it was a crime scene. I didn’t even know what it was supposed to look like.”

“And you saw this killer?”

“I didn’t see the killer.” Will’s voice had gone somewhat lower. “The body was too neat. He was placed on his back, legs aligned, hands crossed on his stomach, eyes slipped closed.”

“Care and precision.”

“Precision and delicacy and tenderness,” Will said. “I told them that.”

Hannibal tilted his head. “And they considered you a suspect.”

Will didn’t answer. He drank more. It was sad, Hannibal thought, to drink so much of a wine made to be absorbed with parsimony and delight. But his mind was damp and floating, not in wine, but in the proximity of Will Graham.

“I was kept in a center for juvenile delinquents for 48 hours, questioned by the police. The bright lights, no bed, no food. The smell and taste of my own fear.”

“And your knowledge, feasting on your heart.”

Will nodded, slowly. A rapid, twitching laugh echoed from the parking below. Hannibal looked and glimpsed the sight of a dress, swirling. A car door being opened and reflecting the light of a street lamp. Will’s face had become downcast and blank, the wine breaching his walls to leave him limp and empty as if he still expected them to protect him. He tightened his tuxedo jacket around himself. He seemed thinner in the paling night. On his brow, some sweat blurred the skin near the temples.

“We should go back inside,” Hannibal said. “It’s well past midnight.”

 

* * *

 

Inside, Will went to his lecture hall, his step number and heavier, and Hannibal followed him there. There was hardly any wine left in their bottles. Hannibal’s motions were uneven. His senses were altered, the smells less sharp, the taste more prominent and the lights stronger, seeking to envelop him. He had only had the 2005 Château Margaux on three occasions since its fabrication and only one glass, every time. Now, the wine’s licorice nose was so clear and so bright, he could have been swimming in it rather than drinking it. But soon, the acidity generated by alcohol in his stomach would cover everything else in the wash-out that resembled hunger.

Will sat down at his desk. “Do you still feel imprisoned, as though the wrong accusations never really left you?” Hannibal said.

“Not when I work for Jack.” He sipped the last of his wine and placed the empty bottle before him, spreading both palms on his desk. “It makes me feel safe. Like if I was trapped in a dense contraption that gives me both weight and frailty.”

Hannibal’s smile was slow and bracing.

They spoke again after that, but Will’s words were losing their paths. His fever was rising, just as his body couldn’t bear the augmented stress. It didn’t seem entirely unpleasant and soon Will fell into a slow daze that left him near sleep in his chair.

Hands not as steady as usual, Hannibal went to Will’s side and removed the glasses Will had put back on his nose in an attempt to steady an unstable world. Hannibal took Will's pulse with two fingers on his throat. The Château Margaux and the scent of the encephalitis joined together to crash into waves and waves of sweetness. He breathed it in and, eyes closed, didn’t let go of it, hoped never to, and perhaps then he could keep Will inside.

 

* * *

 

Amid the swim of sensations, the dizzy litheness of hangovers and the bright lights overhead, Beverly’s face looking down at him was what woke Will up. She seemed a bit more tired than usual, her face drawn, but her gaze intent and curious and, Will realized, amused. “Did you sleep here?”

Swallowing, Will found his mouth dry and rough, like it had been breathing fire all night. “Yes.”

She stepped back as he sat up straighter. His jacket was off his shoulders and had been placed neatly on his desk, the arms flattened and the back with a vertical fold in the exact middle. He tried to remember Hannibal getting it off of him and couldn’t find the image in himself, even if he did recall the man’s touch on his shoulders. He didn’t remember him leaving at all. Yet the chair where he had sat, in the first row, to his right, was empty and clean. The two bottles were out of sight.

“Is Jack alright?” he asked Beverly, getting to his feet. There was a sway that settled in his stomach, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“He must have been thundering after what I told Kade Prurnell.”

She shook her head elegantly, while Will found his undone bow tie in the pocket of his jacket, folded, again. He put on his glasses and things became a little less glassy. “Well, you’re going to hear about leaving early for a long time.” She looked around at the classroom, as if high walls retained secrets like a sponge. “But that wasn’t entirely true so you might get away with it.”

“Did Ms. Prurnell leave early?”

“No. As a matter of fact, I heard her telling Jack you seemed very good at what you did.” She pursed her lips in an apology. “If lacking in people skills.” They started toward the door. Will’s step was steadier the more he walked. “What did you do?”

“Showed her how good I was. Apparently.”

They stopped to get a coffee from the machine down the hall. The dark liquid stuttered down. “Jack searched for Dr. Lecter for a while, though.”

Will froze for a moment, the hot paper cup in hand.

“He must have been called away or something,” Beverly went on.

Will nodded.

 

* * *

 

He drove back to Wolf Trap. He was almost there, just over the Western Virginia state line, when he began to remember. At first, he wasn’t sure if it was memory or dream. _There were no walls and no lights. He was sitting with Hannibal, him in his office desk chair and the psychiatrist facing him, in the first row. Hannibal had taken his tuxedo jacket off and collected their two bottles of wine._

_“Why are you here?” Will said._

_“I was invited. And I like you.”_

_Will leaned forward. His forehead was damp, with sweat, but he didn’t recall feeling warm. “There might be nothing good about who I am.”_

_A smile came to Hannibal’s face as he settled down. “Then maybe I’m not interested in the goodness of it.”_

_His head felt heavy when Will shook it slowly. “I mean… here with me now.” He blinked, tried to focus. The farthest rows of chairs were lifting into the air before him, like the weightless leaves of autumn. “Why are you here with me now?” The invisible walls parted and some sun came in. The sun of Minnesota, cold and gray. “You like people. Not just me.”_

_Hannibal didn’t seem to notice the sky above their heads. He looked down at his crossed hands. He didn’t seem really drunk, but then, Will didn’t know if he could have seen that. “Are you familiar with the very end of the 15th century in Florence?”_

_It took Will a moment to gather his mind. “Savonarola’s reform?”_

_“Claiming he had prophetic visions, Friar Girolamo Savonarola convinced the Florentines to ban the former royalty and established a religious dictatorship.”_

_“He was burned,” Will went on._

_“Tried, tortured and burned, yes.” Hannibal leaned forward over the concrete railing. “But not before he had also put in place the bonfires of vanities.”_

_“People had to burn the things they loved the most.”_

_“To prove their devotion to God,” Hannibal said. “At the peak of Savonarola’s reign, the bonfires were so high, they reached higher than the palaces and churches.”_

_A small smile curved Will’s lips. He didn’t feel it, but saw Hannibal smiling in return. “You like to see things burn, Dr. Lecter?”_

_“It can be crucial to separate the things we merely appreciate and enjoy from the things we love most.”_

_“By setting them on fire?”_

_The room had entirely disappeared now. Wind blew in his hair and Will knew it was a dream. “Some things cannot be burned, Will. They live on through the flames.”_

In his home, after a shower and another coffee, he looked at his phone for a long while. It was on the bedside table. Settling down in bed in the morning light to try and sleep some more, hoping the alcohol had sufficiently exhausted his body to keep more visions away, Will searched for Hannibal Lecter’s number. He brought it up on the screen, but couldn’t think of anything to say exactly. He placed the phone back down.

On his back, just as sleep came over him like the rocking of the waves, a question took shape. _Do you want to burn what you love?_ It was quickly washed away.

 


	2. 2.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set in late season 2.

Ice had clogged the stream over the winter and, during a storm, a tree had collapsed over the shore and into the creek. It had sunk into the water and barred the way. In the last few days, the air had warmed up again, the ice had melted. Now, dead leaves obstructed the currents, mounting up against dead wood. There was a pocket of stagnant water where no fish would go.

Will started to remove his waders. He set up to fish from the shore. _“I didn’t think you could do that,” Abigail said, somewhere behind him._

His hallucinations were gone. Voices had remained in his mind, vivid and sparkling with the energy he invested in them to make sure none disappeared. Will knew that if he turned around, she wouldn’t be there. “I can,” he said. “It’s just unlikely I’ll catch anything.”

Will had chosen the twilight of the late afternoon. This morning had been windy and sleety. By noon, all the trees and leaves had lost their shine of ice. All day, _he had hoped to see Abigail. “He wants you to catch him,” she said._

_“I don’t know what he wants.”_

_He could hear the smile in her voice. “You pretend to know what you’re doing.”_

Like a conjurer, he had tried to remember what his brain was like, healing from the encephalitis in prison. The weeks of pills and antibiotics. His first moment of astonishment as he realized that the heat wouldn’t entirely leave him. Some of it was his own. And it was _the warmth of the gun in his hand as he shot down Garret Jacob Hobbs. It was the spurts of blood from Abigail’s neck in his palm. “People should believe that,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s a good thing.”_

_“That each one of them thinks you’re doing something different?” she said. “Please don’t tell me this is all for me.”_

Will turned around and found nothing behind him. The words left. The voice left. Only his line in the dead water remained.

He wished he still hallucinated. He wanted to be taken back to the moment when the warmth carried him into sleep and was there when he woke. He wanted the blurred myriad of sentiments to flow his head. Instead, he had a precise idea of what he was going to do. It floated somewhere above reality. He knew it couldn’t happen this way.

Still looking at the trees where Abigail had been, he nodded to the empty space in his life. “Happy birthday, Abigail.”

 

* * *

 

By the time he made it back home, the cold and the night were back. The ground felt solid and frozen under his boots even though some of the snow had melted. He thought that it would be hard to bury a body at this temperature. The hits of the shovel on the ground. A pool of blood seeping out of a wound, tentatively freezing on the ground. Thoughts of opportunistic cannibalism filled his head. Stricken faces and tears. Pigs' mauls. Mason Verger's smiling teeth. 

He had caught two small carps. They hung by his side. In the moonlight, they seemed less dead, like the gleam of their scales took life back to them.

He came to the top of the hill, with his house below. The lights were on on the ground floor and on the porch. Even though he had made sure to leave only the kitchen lamp lit when he left.

Before the thought had crossed his mind, he knew who was there. He walked faster, the fishes slapping against his leg.

The door was unlocked. Inside, a fire was running. In the chimney, he could still see precisely the place where he had hammered through the rock: he had filled the hole with more stone from the field, but the mortar was still fresher than the rest. It drew a paler reflection from the firelight.

Hannibal Lecter was sitting at the piano, facing him, his back to the keyboard. On the bench beside him was Buster. His fingers parting the fur, Hannibal inspected the scar from the wound left by Randall Tier. He had hung his cashmere overcoat on Will’s rack.

“I thought I was a regular patient,” Will said. A faint glow came from a lamp in the corner, but it stopped at Will's feet. Only the glimmers of the fire played on Hannibal’s face. 

“I still have your key,” Hannibal pointed out. “You canceled your appointment. I judged best to use it, in case you were distressed.”

Will took the fish to the kitchen. “It could have been a plan to kill you. Lure you here. Alone.”

Hannibal approved. “It was you who requested that we have none of the common lies of everyday life between us.” His hand left Buster, but the dog stayed by his side. He sat on the bench, wagging his tail and reveling in the attention. There weren’t many visitors in Wolf Trap and even less now. This was a feast of happiness for him. Will felt as if the air in the room had rarefied. “Have you changed your mind? Would you attack from behind, in the shadows?” Hannibal asked.

“No,” Will said. His eyes went beyond the planks of the floor, digging deep into the earth, where the winter had no reach, where he could be warm. “I’d wait for the moment when daylight fades and shades lengthen. It’s where violence should be.”

“In the realm of things twisted out of proportion?”

“Just when the night of the mind starts.” There was some dirt near the heel of Will’s thumb. At first, it looked like clinging mud, but as Will turned his palm upward, it caught the firelight and shone with the iridescence of fish scales. Buster eyed Hannibal hopefully. “He’s healing up just fine,” Will said. “Tier’s bite lacked depth. It broke the skin, but brought back only fur.” 

“Didn’t reach the muscle.” Hannibal rose from his seat. “Why did you cancel?”

Will nodded. “You know why.”

A cell of air enmeshed in the wood burst. Rockie lifted her head from her pad and inspected the flames. “Sometime after eleven tonight, she would have turned nineteen,” Hannibal said. “So many things we’ve kept of Abigail, and yet they fail to reconstitute her.” Hannibal’s face slipped into a sorrow so taking, he slipped away for a time, swallowed by the things that ate him.

It was like staring at himself and Will closed his eyes. “She shouldn’t be reconstituted. She wasn’t a sum of parts,” he said, finally, sitting down.

The room became darker. Perhaps a cloud had obscured the moon outside. The dogs were still asleep. Buster had joined them on their pads.

“We always want to reconstitute what we mourn,” Hannibal said. “Once we have managed to leave the labyrinth of melancholy, memory reaches some flimsy truth. And often, that truth is only a part of what we have lost.”

“The part we wanted.”

“The part that’s worth our pain,” Hannibal said.

Will leaned back into his chair. It seemed normal for Hannibal to be here. It was comforting to a degree, even if that comfort took the shape of pain. “When I went back to your office after you exonerated me, at least half of me was angled toward revenge.”

Hannibal’s jacket was draped over the back of the other armchair. He had a black waistcoat over a white shirt that gleamed aggressively, eaten by the fire. “And the other, minor half?”

“Was wondering what I should avenge exactly,” Will said, the air coming out of his throat in a pressured whisper.

Reaching for his suit jacket, Hannibal brushed by Will. “Dine with me tonight,” he said.

In the seat, Will realized he was shaking, bluntly, starting from the bones. “Tell me something.”

“Yes?”

Will sat up straighter. The darkness crowded in. “Is she dinner?”

As he tilted his head, Hannibal’s features went colder, unfixed enough that Will couldn’t grasp him anymore. “No,” Hannibal said.

Slowly, Will nodded. Inside, he was still faltering, coming piece by piece back into shape.

Hannibal had finished dressing, jacket, coat and all. In the fireplace, the flames were not as tall and more red than yellow. “I have a few priced Château d’Yquem. They should be tasted,” Hannibal said. “And a Bordeaux that would pair well with the fish.” He had gone to the kitchen and put Will’s carps in layers of wrapping paper.

Something released in Will, not unlike abandon. He nodded.

When he got up to feed the dogs before they left, Will found that Hannibal had done that already. It was why they were resting calmly by the fire. He wondered when his own soul had gone to sleep and why he hadn’t noticed.

They took Hannibal’s car. As he stepped out of the house and locked the door behind him, Will knew that he had left Abigail there as a prisoner of his memory. The dogs were still quiet. He put out the fire and left a lamp on in the living room, near his bed, to keep them company.

 

* * *

 

Altogether, Hannibal’s hospitality was narratively structured. There were steps prior to a meal, to set the story. Then the food arrived at the table and the devouring took place, each course a step in the quest to the distant goal. And finally, the dessert and wine brought the guests back to peace and calm, a return to an undisturbed state of affairs, as if they hadn’t together participated in killing, dismembering, roasting and consuming other life forms.

As dinner proceeded, Hannibal’s home was gradually replaced around Will with the house of the Hobbs family. The dark blue of the dining room walls became the pale beige of Garret Jacob Hobbs’s kitchen. The herb garden transformed into the forest waiting in the backyard.

Will was eating Abigail Hobbs, even now, as he shared Hannibal’s masquerading life. Months ago, weeks ago, the realization would have sparked anger in him. Now, there was nothing like it. Some grief climbed into him. It jumped down from his eyes into his plate, then on his fork, and then it entered his mouth.

They had taken two glasses of wine with the fish _à la bordelaise_. “Had you planned a commemoration?” Hannibal said. They sat face to face. Behind Will, the fire warmed the dining room and his breath with it.

Eyeing his half-empty wine glass, Will said, “You don’t seem the type to commemorate.”

“Some remembrance isn’t aimed at memory. It fuels the soul, keeps us alive in the knowledge that others aren’t.”

Will tilted his head. A memory formed. Something fogged and unclear. He spoke with his eyes closed. “We talked about the fire. When we drank on the rooftop.”

“And of burning effigies to obtain salvation.” Hannibal finished his glass. “What else do you remember?”

The Bordeaux danced on Will's tongue. “You took my glasses off,” he said, after a moment.

A smile came to Hannibal’s lips. “And disposed of the bottles,” he said.

It wasn’t exactly a plan as it formed in Will’s mind. He felt as if something pushed him roughly, in the back, to send him on his way or to make him deviate from it. “We should do that,” he said. He downed the rest of the wine in his glass. “Drinking.” 

Hannibal nodded to their empty glasses. “Château d’Yquem is a liquorous wine. The grapes selected for its fabrication are the ones touched by a particular fungus. It balances the fruits’ sugar with acidity.”

Will took a thumb to his lips, absently. “She’d have liked it.”

 

* * *

 

Hannibal brought the bottle of Château d’Yquem to the study and they sat down. Their armchairs faced the fire. In Will’s Wolf Trap home, the embers may still be going in the fireplace, just as the ones here, in Baltimore, were kindling.

Leaning forward, Will held his glass out. Wine poured slowly along its curved body. The golden thickness was striking. The liquid held itself together, hesitating toward solidity. When Will tasted it, he found it to be slightly stronger than he had expected. He felt it only when he swallowed, the sweetness having masked most of it.

Will tried to remember the silence they had possibly shared on the Academy’s rooftop, away from the party. He didn’t remember words either. The more his brain fiddled with the memory, the more it only seemed to pick at it, tearing small scabs, but never reaching its core. “Would you have let me die from the encephalitis?”

“Letting you die and killing you are two different things,” Hannibal said. He had removed his jacket. His pale blue shirt caught the flames and fed them. The wine cradled the light in his palm.

“You postulate that I think you want to kill me.”

“Don’t you?”

He recalled Beverly Katz’s dress and its shimmer. Jack’s voice trailing after him. The weight of the bottle in his hand. “I think you want me to kill.”

“To kill? Intransitively?” 

Then came the noises of the party below as people left. The infinite parking lot underneath. The sky above. “Intransitively enough that it’s no longer a thought or a mechanism,” Will said. “Just a sentiment.”

Tilting his glass up, Hannibal didn’t answer.

Just as Will had begun to leave the memory alone, it grasped him and yanked him backward. He remembered joy. He remembered trust. Like they were alone, nearly pitted against the stars. He had expected the acidity to return with the sweetness, and the moldy smell of his cell at the prison, but nothing came.

 

* * *

 

The second bottle of Château d’Yquem, Hannibal opened in the study. They had drunk the other bottle in silence. Will would have said it was peaceful and wondered what Jack's reaction would have been at the description.

In his mind, all the traces he could find of Abigail were her empty room at the clinic and the few belongings she had left there. There were a handful of books and the clothes that Alana had gotten for her. Will didn’t know what had happened with them.

He got to his feet to take his glass. He still felt solid. The alcohol was warmer than his body as it went in. “If there were a bonfire of vanities, here, now,” he said, “what would you give it?”

Hannibal arched his eyebrows. The motions of his hands and forearms had begun to lose their common stiffness. He had grown comfortable, Will thought. He intended the idea to be part of a larger cluster that worked in the center of his mind. The one where Hannibal was restrained and bound, sometimes in invisible bonds, sometimes in the exact same place Will had been in the BSHCI. Instead, he felt a brief nudge of contentment. It ran through him like a thrill. “Participation in the _falò_ wasn’t compulsory,” Hannibal said.

“But not doing it would be seen as wanting to hide something.”

Moving back to his seat, Hannibal put the bottle between them. His cheeks were rosy with the alcohol, his eyes somewhat stoical, but with gleams of truth coming through, from somewhere between the pupil and the iris, in a crescent of gold. “We have resolved to refrain from positive lies. Not to unwrap from the layers that hide our minds from sight.”

Will seemed to consider something for a moment, his eyes brightening with the fire before them. “The last time we drank together, I told you about my first crime scene. Tell me about your first.”

Taking his glass from the table to balance it on his crossed legs, Hannibal gave a graceful bow. “My first patient was referred to me by a colleague with a diagnosis of depression,” he said. “Her name was Grace Forioz.”

“Is she dead?”

“She is, as far as I know, well, in Maine.” Hannibal paused to take a sip from his glass.

Will took another sip. Taste had left him almost entirely. He only swallowed a long, thick sweetness. He wondered what other senses were gone too. “That’s not very interesting,” he said.

“Psychiatry is mostly not,” Hannibal said. He raised his glass to the flames, looking out for their reflection in the wine. “On a singular occasion, some of us meet a patient that will change our life forever.”

Will tried to focus on the noise of the winter wind, outside the study’s windows. “Why was she depressed?” he asked.

“She didn’t love her husband enough not to hate herself for staying with him.”

Rolling the glass’s ball between his hands, Will watched the carpet’s motif distorted by the wine. “And she didn’t hate him enough to leave,” he finished.

Hannibal lifted an open hand, half in apology not to have provided better entertainment, half in constricted disdain. “A bleak and common case.”

Jaw clenching, Will nodded. “Her husband. How is he?”

Hannibal moved to refill their glasses. Will’s head was cushioned in alcohol, as if brined and preserved. He felt safe. At any moment, Hannibal Lecter could reach for the scalpel on the desk and stick it deep in Will’s belly. And Will wouldn’t have been scared. He wouldn’t have been angry. “We’re not really talking about my patient,” Hannibal said.

“Then what are we doing?” 

Wine poured in both their glasses. Will had gotten up and stood beside Hannibal. “You are weakening me,” Hannibal said. His voice was steady and informative, like this had no echo at all. 

It found its home in Will’s chest. “Show me.” His eyes waited on Hannibal’s face, until the older man turned to meet him. “Where you do it. The house where we found Miriam Lass was theater. Show me where.” 

Hannibal tilted his head. “I’m not in a position to omit,” he said. “But can I refuse?”

Will shrugged slightly. “This is not an interrogation. If you refuse, this,” he gestured to the room around them – his hand flickered in the fire, light going through the fingers, “will only be burned.” He glanced at the nearly empty bottle. “There are worse fates.”

“Tell me why.”

In Will’s mouth, dryness came from all the way down and stopped at the lips, kept moist with wine. “It would broaden my view of you.”

For a moment, murder surfaced in Hannibal’s eyes as clearly as any other thought would. Will didn’t see how he would do it. What he saw was a _river of multiple wishes and endless possibles of how it could be done. Some of them right here, right now. A shard from a shattered wine glass. Plunged in Will’s throat, at the jugular. Hannibal’s mouth, around the broken glass, sucking the blood coming from the wound, cutting his own mouth on it_.

“Very well,” Hannibal said. He took the bottle, collected their glasses and showed Will out of the room.

 

* * *

 

In the kitchen, Hannibal placed the Château d’Yquem down. The sweet Sauternes was gnawing at Will’s stomach like appetite. Hannibal’s steps were just as sure, if a little stiffer than usual, but around Will everything else grew hazier. Will could have seen Hannibal’s mind looking straight back at him if he gazed insistently. It made him spin inside. He could tell himself it was the alcohol.

Next to the refrigerator was the door to a large pantry. Hannibal opened it. He had filled their glasses almost to the brim with the remaining wine. 

Inside, herbs dried on racks. A set of freezers hid stacks of larger cuts of meat. Peppers marinated with garlic and capers in glass jars caught the lamp light. A bone-saw and rack to dry venison were on the far right. Hannibal took Will’s glass from his hand. Something inside him burned. Will sensed the heat as well. Hannibal’s eyes followed Will’s shoulders, then slid to his torso, his waist, his legs and stopped at his feet, pausing there.

His mind idle with the roused drunkenness, it took Will a moment to understand. He knelt and felt under the counter, finding a latch in no time. He pushed it and the counter moved, sliding on hidden wheels. It revealed a trap door, seamlessly cut into the floor’s wood. It was large enough to accommodate someone encumbered by a dead body.

The steps going down were half-stairs, half-ladder, clean, but in rougher wood. They descended into darkness. Will didn’t look back and went down.

Dizzy, he held himself on the steps behind him as he descended. At the bottom, he was wrapped in a lightless black before Hannibal flicked a switch and naked light bulbs shone, cold and pale above their heads. Hannibal's pupils were a tense, widened dark. The capillaries in the skin of his face were dilated and reddened his cheeks and lips.

“Are you enjoying the view?” Hannibal said, handing Will his glass. The golden gleam of the wine was foreign among the gray stone all around.

Will had expected something he would know. But this was nothing like the Shrike’s nest. Hobbs’s cabin had been his heart, punctured with antlers, clean enough not to give anything away, dusty enough to be human. 

This was divine in its detachment. The ground under Will’s feet was concrete. The walls were stone, as hold as the house. Plastic drapes, heavy and thick, closed off an area at the far end of the room. Will’s eyes attached to it.

Hannibal drank a sip silently, trailed a finger on a shelf – bottles, stored IV bags and a shiny tourniquet – and dragged his eyes back to Will. He was as phlegmatic as Will had ever seen him. “Is this how you imagined the Chesapeake Ripper?”

The wine had gotten to Will’s mind. “I didn’t expect this to feel so…”

“So?”

“Bare,” Will said. When he started walking toward the end of the room, he realized how drunk he was. His stomach felt empty suddenly and his head was so light, it could have been disconnected from his neck and flown away from him.

“Suited for a purpose,” Hannibal’s voice said, behind him, not far enough. Will kept walking. “Not all things can be beautiful, Will.”

Will frowned. Hannibal flicked lights on as they proceeded forward and the plastic sheet acting as a wall reflected slim shards of it, like bolts of thunder. “This isn’t absence of beauty. This is stagecraft too, deceit as cruelty, lonely echoes of an empty heart,” Will said.

They had reached the closed-off section. Will stood before it, searching for traces of his own face reflected in the plastic. He made no move to open it, even though his fingers brushed against it. Hannibal joined him. Will turned to look at him, stopping at where the jaw met the neck. “What did you expect? Tell me,” Hannibal said, stepping closer. 

“Elegant savagery.” Will closed his eyes, tilted forward so that his forehead almost touched plastic. His exhales pooled against it in a gray mist. His neck was warmer than it should have been. “Brutality so pure it could be virtue.” Will’s glass was removed from his hand and set down nearby. Hannibal’s breath was against his neck. “Something almost like fire.”

“But not quite,” Hannibal said into Will’s hair.

“You don’t metaphorically devour. You don’t undo bodies to free their immateriality,” Will said. “You…”

Hannibal spoke in his neck. “What, Will?”

“Do you want me to consume you?” Will reached for the plastic drape. “Are you searching for fire hot enough?” He pulled the partition aside in one swoop. Behind it, there was no one and nothing that he couldn’t picture. A gurney was in the center of a small surgical theater. He had expected blood. Traces that wouldn’t fade. There were binds and straps at the legs, arms and torso, hanging loosely under the gurney, but they were also clean.

He tried to move forward, but Hannibal held him. He didn’t fight him at all. The man’s nose was at the collar of his shirt. Will’s mind stayed on the clean gurney. Would he have recognized Abigail’s blood? If there had been blood, would he have taken it to be hers? “Did you kill her here?” he said. “Or did you do it in Minnesota?”

Slowing down, Hannibal’s intakes of breath were longer and calmer than Will believed possible. His soul was being extracted out of him, one molecule after the other, the smell more intimate than the space between atoms. “Abigail is not why you are here,” Hannibal said.

It was the wine. Or it was whatever Hannibal had put in the wine. Will sagged back, legs almost giving out. It might have been the wine, because Hannibal staggered behind him, but held him still, one hand clasped over his left arm, the other tight against his ribcage, on his right breast, crushing him, both of them. “You didn’t burn her to attain elevation. You enjoyed the twists of her in the flames.” 

Hannibal’s hand pushed down on his ribs, trying to slip between the bones, through the plate and into the flesh. As Will would later remember it, they both fell. It seemed like a good thing to close his eyes, here, under the clinical lights that saw everything. As his eyelids fell shut, he saw their two glasses, almost empty, breaking on the floor.

The other man didn’t let go of him, still breathing in his neck, in and out, in and out.

 

* * *

 

Will woke up in a room he had never seen. The walls were a dark blue, closing over him like a velvet sky. On the ceiling above, long streaks of light twisted like hair in the wind. He blinked and chased the thirst on the walls of his mouth. When he shut his eyelids, the image of Hannibal remained, incandescent, no telling where his eyes started and the fire began. Will recalled his last sharp intake of breath, Hannibal’s arms tightening around him, his face in Will’s shoulder, the glass scattered on the floor.

He was no longer in the basement. The air he breathed in through his mouth had a staleness to it, but there was another smell beyond that, something floral and organized, a cluster of trees lively and green as the thunder echoed above. Like the stag. Like Hannibal.

Tilting his head into something soft – a pillow – Will noticed the distinctive mix of pain and weight in his left arm. It started at the wrist, where an intravenous line was set, and climbed up to the elbow. The rest he caught in a flash. The bag of fluids hanging from a metallic pole by the bed. The coverlet of indigo suede under him, light and feathery. The fire in the fireplace, reflected on everything else in the room. The clouds of dark around him. The pressure on his right fingers, where Hannibal held his hand.

As he felt the alcohol twisting in his stomach still, he turned his head carefully, a loud thumping around him, emanating from his head outward or the other way around, he couldn’t tell. Hannibal was lying on his back, the collar of his shirt loosened and his hair disarrayed. His left hand clung to Will’s right, his fingertips nested in the palm. His right hand was attached to an intravenous drip as well, the catheter snaking into the darkness above them.

Without a tremor, Hannibal woke, just as Will pulled his right hand out of his. “What’s in the IV?” Will asked.

Hannibal’s face was so unguarded that Will looked away. “Saline. For rehydration,” Hannibal said.

Will sat on the edge of the bed. His legs felt wobbly, but he had been spared the nausea, even though there was still an aftertaste of wine on the back of his tongue. “Was there anything else than wine in the wine?” 

“It’s more mundane,” Hannibal said. “We are too old for this.”

With a tinge of pain, Will slid the needle out of his arm. A droplet of blood welled up on the skin. He felt fragile and hollow now. Maybe it wasn’t the hangover. “I feel hungry.”

Behind him, Hannibal sat up in the bed. His shirt was rumpled. “It is not proper hunger, only a build-up of acid in the stomach,” he said.

Through the curtains, a crack of daylight came in, pallid. It must be early. In the fireplace, the fire burned still. Will’s mind lost its focus and _he returned to the night before. Hannibal tended the fire, blackened, ashes dripping from his fingers. Not unlike the stagman. Only, he was covered in flakes of burnt skin._ _Will reached out to touch him and his hand took out a fistful of crushed wood from Hannibal’s shoulder._

He paused before the bed. The embers gave off a dim light that made them seem soft and tranquil. He thought of Abigail’s death, or her remnants, perhaps still in the basement, somewhere, under his feet.

He sat down on the settee. “There are things I want to ask you that you would not let me ask you.”

“Because if I answered them the way you want, I wouldn’t be who you want me to be.”

Will felt the warmth of the fire on his legs. “I don’t want you to be anything.”

Hannibal had gotten up from the bed and pulled tightly on the blanket, erasing the imprint of his body. “We always have hopes for others. Especially for those we resemble the most.”

“The closer we are to them, the harder it is to see these hopes for what they are,” Will said.

Moving to the other side of the bed, Hannibal straightened the covers where Will had been. Next, he collected the saline bags and the transparent drips. Then the needles and butterflies. All were lined evenly on the bedside table. “They are more like dreams.” Hannibal paused, eyes on the pillow where Will’s head had slept. “Like you dream of asking me if I regret what was done to Abigail.”

Will got up. He was in prison again, suddenly. Behind the bars, like the canary in the cage, waiting to suffocate only for others to be then properly alarmed. “You would say you don’t.”

“Not because I am incapable of self-reproach,” Hannibal said.

The fire had not been maintained since long. Will wondered if Hannibal had slept at all. Perhaps he could remember this, the same way he recalled the Quantico roof and the blindness of the stars above. It wasn’t Hannibal’s betrayal as much as his own trust that hurt him now. “You have no capacities or incapacities. All that goes through your mind is sound, already fleshed out,” he said.

Hannibal stopped in front of the curtains, peering outside, fingers slight and agile. “Regretting a death and wishing for the dead to return to us is not the same.”

“It’s not.” Will searched himself and found shards, bright like morning, beginning to piece together, as he wondered where knowledge ended and trust began. “How you would kill me?”

“I don’t know,” Hannibal said, after a moment. He pulled the curtains open and light flooded the room, putting out the fire, reduced to dark-red ambers. “The idea of your death is an empty shape, far at the periphery of my vision.” Will had reached the door. Hannibal’s voice stopped him. He had almost escaped. “Before Savonarola died, heat combusted his arm so that his hand seemed to extend in a blessing.”

Will’s fingers curled around the knob. “Who was he blessing?”

“The crowd that enjoyed his death.”

Opening the door, Will didn’t think. He meant to flee, but he froze near the kitchen. Inside, all was quiet, dull with the silence of coming dawn. His steps moved forward and Will stayed behind and watched his own back, peek in the pantry, find everything unmoved and untouched.

 

* * *

 

In the afternoon, Will woke in his own bed. The first thing he did was to change clothes. They smelled of Château d’Yquem and they reminded Will of Hannibal’s bed, feeling like sheets on his skin.

Then the dogs sat at his feet, while a bag of tea soaked in hot water. He warmed his hands on the mug. The complete silence of Wolf Trap had swallowed him.

After he had eaten something, he found the old Ridpath volume on his bookshelf, brown and worn. Flipping the pages, he found the painting of the death of Savonarola. It was a black and white rendering. The fire was almost pyramidal under the feet of the Florentine preacher. He hanged by the neck from the too thin, too high gallows, together with two other friars. They were like a grape of raisins, held above the mouth of purity just when it became sin. Feet first.

 

* * *

 

“You alright?” Jack asked him.

Will sat down. Jack poured him a whiskey and pushed it across the desk slowly. “Yeah. Why?” The smell of the alcohol alone tied his stomach, but Will drank it anyway. The burn was fine.

“You look pale.”

Nodding, Will placed the glass down before his hands started shaking. “Tired.”

Eyes on him again, Jack let a brief flicker of worry show, then shifted back to solid ground, almost blind. He leaned back in his chair, downed his whiskey. “It was Abigail Hobbs’s birthday yesterday.” 

Will gave a curt nod.

“Something happened,” Jack said.

Will felt the licks of sin at his feet. “Hannibal trusts me,” he said softly.

Outside of Jack’s office, footsteps passed by, a reminder of the real world. Jack pursed his lips and nodded once. “That’s good, Will.”

“He _really_ trusts me, Jack.”

Something in Jack changed. His hand was on its way to the whiskey bottle. It stopped and returned to the chair’s arm. “That’s _really_ good, then,” he said, flatly. “Is it a problem?” He didn’t wait for Will to answer. “Think about Abigail Hobbs, Will.”

Will huffed. “I’m weary,” he said. “Of thinking about Abigail. I’m afraid my mind will turn her death into something thread-bare and desolate.”

Jack’s hand was back at the whiskey bottle. He poured his own glass and offered more to Will. Will shook his head. “Then think about yourself, about what he did to you.” Jack drank. “You know this man. You know what he is. You’ve got your face against the tree’s bark, right now, but don’t forget the forest.”

“The forest is a forest of dead, Jack,” Will said. “It’s on fire and the smoke is coming out of our mouths.”

 

* * *

 

The drive took Will most of the next day. It began to rain when he reached Maine.

When he reached his destination, he checked the address he had pulled from Mrs. Forioz driving registration. It matched the one of the small antique shop on the other side of the street.

Inside, it smelled of glue, dusty wood and varnish. A woman in her twenties was behind the cash. “Excuse me,” Will said. “I’m searching for Mrs. Grace Forioz.”

The younger woman frowned. She turned to the backstore. “Mom?”

A petite, elegant woman emerged from the back. She wore a long white apron covered with handprints of paint and varnish spots. “Mrs. Forioz?”

She smiled and offered her hand. “Herself. I’ve remarried though. It’s Calvet now.”

They had to move to the side as the daughter went to see to an elderly couple who had just walked in. “I’m sorry if this is personal,” Will started. “But what happened to your first husband?”

The woman blinked slowly, frowning. “He passed away.” Will was still holding her hand. “Almost 18 years ago. Just after Christine was born. An accidental fire in the workshop he owned. All the old wood.”

Will let go of her hand. It was very warm. She was smiling.

“Why?” she asked him.

He shook his head and muttered an apology. All the old wood. All the dark smoke. He couldn’t breathe. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do not - I repeat - DO NOT get drunk on Sauternes. You will never want to see liquorous wine again. Only Hannibal can get away with it.


	3. 3.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-season 3.

As soon as they surfaced, they were thrown against the face of the cliff. One after the other, the waves crushed them against the rock. Will clung to Hannibal’s shirt, his waist, his shoulders. But all twirled around them. He couldn’t move his legs, they were tired and frozen. Many times, he thought he couldn’t breathe, but the wild ocean knocked the air out of him and he gulped in another puff. 

At this moment, Hannibal wasn’t Hannibal, he was a thing among the water, floating and struggling. Will wasn’t sure he was anything either.

It took him some time to realize that Hannibal held on to the rock facade of the cliff. When Will tried to pull away, sending an arm out to swim, Hannibal grasped his shirt tighter and shook his head in Will’s neck.

“We’ll freeze,” Will said, voice lost in the fracas of the sea.

Hannibal pulled away from Will. His lips had a tinge of frozen to them, between blue and gray. Will read the words on his lips. “Breathe,” they said. Then Hannibal let go of him and sank down. Will felt him slip down, another pull among the currents around them.

Will remembered Abigail’s voice. _The pallor of her skin under the kitchen lights, like a laboratory. He felt vivisected already. I didn’t know what to do. I just did what he told me. After, in the hospital, he had tried to recall if, or not, he had managed to see her ear, where it would be missing. He hadn’t. Maybe if he died now_ , they would find her under his skin. There was room for her whole in there.

He inhaled as deeply as he could and pushed himself down.

 

* * *

 

 _The Leeds’ dog was named Brownie. He was sitting at Will’s feet now, the neat wound in the thorax was closed with sutures. Brownie was well-behaved and didn’t pick at them. Will opened the Leeds’ file on the small motel room desk. The thoughts roamed and turned in his head, never going anywhere. Every time it felt like he had managed to pin down the Tooth Fairy, he looked up_ and Hannibal was there, silent, standing in his prison uniform, nearly smiling.

 _Will returned to his own mind, the warmth of the dog near his feet, the distant smell of the motel room. On the next picture,_ the children smiled in the crisp way standing still for photos required, the parents’ faces open and alight above them. Perfect families, inside and out, who held themselves to be examples, who liked to be seen. And the Tooth Fairy liked to watch.

_The soft noise of a car stopping outside took him out of it. He poured himself more whisky and listened to the steps coming closer. In many possible worlds, they passed by.  
_

_They stopped at his door and knocked._

_Brownie lifted his head in attention. Will opened the door. “Hello, Alana,” he said._

_“Hello, Will.” She cast a glance to the dog on the floor. It brought a smile to her face. It faded quickly like it was held back by something heavier. “Can we talk?”_

_Will stepped aside and invited her in. “Sure.”_

_He sat down on the bed and she leaned against the armchair in the corner. He had already noticed the gait was gone. But there was a stiffness in her hip. Probably always would be._

_“I heard your car,” he said. “No more stalking?”_

_The same smile surfaced and went back down. And Will knew she didn’t want to be reminded of whom they both had been. “I never really understood how the arrest went down,” she started._

_Will refilled his glass. “You didn’t ask Jack about it?”_

_She nodded. She wore her hair in a large braid, tied into a bun on the side of her head, like only the half of a crown. “I did,” she said. “But I never got why.”_

_“Why what?”_

_“From the looks of it, Hannibal surrendered,” she went on. “There are many reasons why people surrender. They’re tired. They’ve lost. The thrill is gone. None of them apply to Hannibal.”_

_“Maybe they do,” Will said. “Hannibal doesn’t require immediate motive.”_

_Alana scoffed gently. “During one of the first conversations I ever had with Hannibal, twenty years ago, we talked about love. Love dwindling, love bursting, love of the senses. Love unreturned.” She waited until Will met her gaze. It was steady and fierce. “He told me that obsession could best be seen as a reversal mechanism: haunt the one who haunts us.” Will placed his glass down. “He loves you, doesn’t he?”_

_Carefully, Will considered the whisky bottle, running a knuckle alongside it. “What made you think of that?”_

_She cocked her head. “The way you looked when you returned to my office. Like you were being pursued.”_

_“I was.”  
_

_Alana paused. “It makes sense, Will.”  
_

_Will nodded. “It does.”_

_She waited. Outside, it was dark enough that they seemed to be alone in the world. “How does it feel?” she said. “That kind of love.”_

_Twisting his head on the side, Will pinched his lips. “Takes the air out of your lungs, turns flesh into flakes and dust,” he said. “Fire.”_

_Alana’s brow arched in a chagrined frown. “Fire is life,” she said._

_Will’s eyes were lost. “Not always.”_

 

* * *

 

Pushing himself down using the facade of the cliff, Will found void under his feet. A hole in the rock. Among the silent cold of the ocean, he felt a thrill, like fear. He moved further down, fighting the waves rolling heavily against the cliff wall. Then, for a moment, everything went black. The sea cave nested in the rock had sucked him in.

He reached a pocket of air and found Hannibal’s hands, gripping his shirt, his shoulder, his hair, pulling him up beside him on a rocky bed. It was covered in algae, layers crispy and dry, topped with fresh humid ones. It was absolutely dark. Hannibal’s hands didn’t let go of him, and Will searched for Hannibal’s neck, his cheeks, his face.

They breathed together in the lightless void, surrounded by the constant noise of the crashing ocean. Mouth against Will’s ear, Hannibal told him of the way out of the sea cave.

Will followed him, keeping his right hand cramped into his side and his left extended, feeling for the wall beside him. They swam in a narrow tunnel, pulling themselves along the uneven rock. 

When they emerged, Will didn’t feel his feet and almost nothing of his right arm.

Later, Hannibal told him how Abigail had found the cave.

“You had a boat?”

“A small one. When the tide is low, the cave is accessible and visible from a distance.”

Will waited. Something warm ran down his neck. Blood or water, he didn’t know. “She never tried to run away?” 

Hannibal’s hands were shaking from the cold. “Never.”

 

* * *

 

For a week, the dawns had been similar, with so much pain and so much medication to fight it, that a week after, when Will woke up, it wasn’t unreasonable to think he was a new man. He was in a single bed, bundled tight, an intravenous line into his arm, stitches in his thigh, his cheek, his shoulder. He knew that Hannibal would speak to him about the pain of healing. It wasn’t the same as the one that came from tearing, or slicing, but Will wouldn’t be able to say how different it was.

He went to the bathroom to shower, put surgical tape on the needle prick in his arm and washed everything away. There was no more blood to give, no red in the water.

 

* * *

 

The room where Hannibal slept was larger. Chiyoh kept the medicine bottles lined neatly up on a shelf. They faced the window and, in the evenings, they would infuse with light like amber about to burst into liquid resin. 

Will had begun to keep a chart. Day after day, he took Hannibal’s vital signs and wrote down numbers in columns. “He’d do something like that himself,” Chiyoh had commented.

“I know,” Will had said.

He sat down by the bed, shifting his bandaged arm to a comfortable position inside his sweater. At least half of him thought he did this to see it if Hannibal died. He took hold of Hannibal’s wrist, counted the beats with his eyes on the clock and noted the number down, the fingers of his left hand gripping the pen they weren’t used to hold.

Eventually, he fell asleep to the sight of the bandages on Hannibal’s chest, rising dimly with each intake of breath.

When Chiyoh woke him up, his fingers were still in Hannibal’s palm.

 

* * *

 

Will woke up and Hannibal was there, weaker than Will had ever seen him. He sat in the armchair, reading, in a loose sweater that wrapped around his thinner frame like a blanket. His hair had somewhat grown and fell flat on his temples, uncombed. 

In a lot of ways, it was impossible to become as close as they already had.

Will sat up in bed. “How long has it been?” Hannibal said, glancing up from his book.

“Seven weeks. She didn’t speak with you?”

Hannibal tilted his head in a slow shake. “She woke me this morning to tell me she was leaving.”

A weight sunk in Will, with only stirs of nameless emotions to signal its dive. Hannibal’s gaze was still considerable, precise in what it reached for and found and seized. Will had grown used to it now, knowing the pull his own eyes exerted. He still didn’t like it, but it was his world now, and worlds didn’t have to be liked. “How long do you feel it’s been?”

Gradually, the morning’s sunlight had come into the room. Hannibal seemed paler for it. “Perception of time is almost as mysterious as time itself, especially because they are one,” he said, clenching his hands into fists, measuring the extent of the strength lost. “I feel new, as if the recent scars freshened the flesh into a renewed growth.”

“Hacking a branch off a tree to collect the sprouts forming at the cut.”

The near-smile Hannibal gave let through the fatigue in his shoulders and neck.

All day long, he kept his left hand hovering near his stomach, as if trying to stop his insides from falling out, were the wound to reopen. He often found a way to have Will in his peripheral vision and then let his eyes seek for the scar on his cheek.

In the evening, both drank broth in mugs, watching the winter landscape. Snow covered the dunes of sand, except for mounds of dead wood and patches of tall grass. A perpetual, repeated sigh came from the nearby sea. 

When Hannibal’s eyes went to the scar again, Will placed his mug down. Turning in his seat, he tilted his head slightly, eyes shut. “I had the stitches out a month ago, but it still itches when I’m tired,” he said.

“Depending on how the scar tissue formed, it might keep tingling,” Hannibal said, after a moment of observational silence.

Will opened his eyes when Hannibal’s thumb brushed the skin of his jaw, where the scar ended. The dermis had been damaged and hair would most likely not grow there again.

“I thought he would use the knife on me,” Hannibal said, pulling his hand away. 

For an instant, Will remembered the rush of power flooding his nerves when he had seen Hannibal crawling to rest against the piano, panting, wounded. He had drunk the wine and wondered who was drinking, Dolarhyde or him. The knife had given him back to himself, breaking immersion to drown him in his own blood. “Me too,” he said.

 

* * *

 

The air was fresh. Midday was close. Will listened to his own harsh breathing. He placed a hand flat over his heart. The beat slowed down and images from his dreams faded, peeling back, leaving his mind fresh and raw.

His legs were still stiff. He got out of bed and dressed, careful not to hurt his shoulder and a gray, silky dawn had come when he walked out of his room.

In the kitchen, Hannibal plucked twigs from a potted thyme plant.

“What did you dream about?” Hannibal asked. He collected the twigs and placed them on top of the thinly sliced carrots, celery branch, filleted leek greens and fresh bay leaves.

“Prometheus. I was trying to hold the sun in my hands and you took my liver out to eat it.”

Hannibal tied a string around the _bouquet garni_. “With my bare hands?”

Will nodded.

The aromatic herbs went into a pot of boiling water. Hannibal fell silent and began to break apart the bones from a chicken carcass he had grilled in the oven last evening. He put them in the broth as well. “I don’t plan to eat you,” he said. He found Will’s eyes over the counter. “Unless you insist.”

A grin came to Will’s lips. It stayed there a moment, then wavered into a frown. “It was my hands I was worried about,” he said. “They held onto fire and weren’t burning.”

 

* * *

 

Somewhere near the third month, they took a walk out on the beach, their step careful. In a flooded pond, trapped between rocks and sand, there were turtle eggs, minuscule, some of them hatched already, some not. Hannibal watched them. Will waited with him, the marine breeze in his hair.

 

* * *

 

It was a few days after that.

They had pill organizers. They were not pink and blue plastic but porcelain lined with gold, painted with rococo scenes. Dark-green landscapes and airy, silky veils on clear skin.

“I suggest we forego our doses for today,” Hannibal said. His hands were black from the earth he had been manipulating, transplanting the wild garlic he had found in the untended backyard.

Placing his glass of water down on the counter and his pills back into their slots, Will said, “A special occasion?”

“Francis interrupted our last shared drink,” Hannibal said. “I thought we could remedy that.”

Will’s eyes dropped to Hannibal’s abdomen under the shirt. He hadn’t seen the wound undressed, but he knew it was there. He didn’t even know what organ it had hit.

“I’d prefer bourbon to wine,” Will said. “Do you object?”

Hannibal shook his head.

 

* * *

 

They set up outside. Winter was at an end and the proximity of the sea made for a more temperate climate. Hannibal had lit the fire before Will sat down. The ground under their feet was uneven pavement, rough stones set into the sandy soil with weeds growing in-between. Will eyed it and figured he could do a better job. It was a punch to the chest to think of that, exactly as he would have by himself, alone in Wolf Trap. Almost as if he had forgotten who he was with.

The alcohol wouldn’t keep them warm enough. A cold wind had swept in from the ocean. 

Will went back inside, searching for blankets. He found them in a closet in the corridor between their rooms. They were rough wool, gray and red in a plaid pattern.

The only seat available was a wooden bench, where they sat side by side. Will spread one blanket over himself. Hannibal did so as well, tucking it around him securely as would a lord preparing for a long carriage-ride in the moors, through night and storm.

Hannibal poured them glasses. It was Bulleit, aged ten years. Will used to have a bottle of Bulleit at home. He was certain Hannibal knew that.

Their gazes brushed as their glasses clang. “To Francis Dolarhyde,” Hannibal said.

Will drank. “The red dragon who survived the fire.”

Placing his glass down on the bench’s arm, Hannibal licked the remainder of the alcohol on his lips. “He was involved with a woman, if I recall,” he said, pensive. “Did she survive?”

“She crawled her way out of the house he’d set to burn atop her head.” Will breathed out. “Reba. Reba McLane. We talked.” _Above the fire, Reba looked up at him from her hospital bed, holding the ice cube to her lips, as if to put out the burns there._

“About him?” 

Will’s thumb slid back and forth on his tumbler. Hannibal’s glass was still half-full. “About being involved with serial killers. About what it’ll make you do, how you’ll think of yourself.”

The make-shift fireplace before them was made from pavement detached from the ground, held together by old cement and earth. It seemed fragile but it held the flames. “How did she think of herself?” Hannibal asked quietly.

“Like she deserved it.” Will finished his glass and exhibited the empty tumbler. With a nod, Hannibal drank the rest of his bourbon with a wince.

“To an extent, she did,” he said. He took the bottle from the ground and poured again. “He must have seen a match of strength in her. An equal, if only in inspiration.”

“The strength required to resist him until the last moment,” Will said.

As night fell around them, darker and darker, the fire cast shadows on the ground, almost reaching their feet. Hannibal splayed his hand on the blanket, where his knees would be underneath. Chiyoh had told Will the ax had cut deep, severing one tendon. “Do you still think of her?” Hannibal said. 

“There’s no recovering from this,” Will said, eyes to the fire. “In passing, teetering moments, I hope she’ll do better than me.”

Hannibal’s shoulder tensed. Will felt it move against his own. “You did fine, Will.”

Above them, the night sky was brighter than Will had seen it in years. The nearest city was miles away. Only mist and vapors could keep them from seeing the blackness of the sky. Will felt protected. The emptiness reminded him that they were alone and wouldn’t ever again be free of each other. “I pulled the trigger on you. In the Hobbs’ kitchen,” he said.

There was a slight nod in Hannibal. “And I had your blood on me after Jack shot you.”

While Hannibal refilled their glasses, Will took his hand to his left shoulder. The bullet scar was still there, the scar tissue shining whenever light caught it. “It’s healed now.”

“Is it?” Hannibal said, cradling Will’s glass in one palm.

The fire caught the glass. It threw more amber flames in the bourbon. Will held the sparks for a moment, eyes lost, then placed the tumbler on the ground. The movement of his upper torso was limited to vertical lifting. He could fold his arm at the elbow, but barely. Torsions were out of the question. He took hold of the too large knit shirt’s collar and pulled it to the left until the skin of his shoulder shone golden in the night. In the middle, the bullet hole had lost most of its roughness. The scar tissue inside, Will felt only shadows, like a spider web in the muscle.

Facing him, Hannibal didn’t let go of his eyes. Only when Will’s gaze had slid down to the old wound, did Hannibal’s follow its path – jaw, neck, collarbone, shoulder. Jack had aimed well. The bullet had passed through the flesh, under the clavicle on its way in, grazing the scapula on its way out.

It was cold enough that mist formed around their mouths. Hannibal lifted a hand and brought it close to Will’s shoulder, his thumb stopping right before the skin. “Never before had I seen anyone flare alive with anger and might like you did,” he said, feeling the air with his fingers.

In a shrug, Will let the shirt back in place. Hannibal’s hand dropped to his side. “It was too personal for there to be any mightiness involved,” Will said.

While Will drank, Hannibal pushed the warm blanket down on his lap and pulled his shirt up. On his right side, there was a fine, long line of silver scar tissue, marking the skin with its shine. “We both have scars from Jack,” he said. “A shard of glass pierced the skin, between my ribs, almost reached my lungs. Bedelia took it out.”

Will’s eyes left Hannibal’s ribs and focused on his glass. The burn went deeper and sharper in his stomach. “She had much more occasions than me to kill you.”

“She did.” Hannibal drank down his glass and reached for the blanket to gather it against himself again.

A gleam to his eye, Will stopped him. “I know about the scars,” he said. “It’s all that’s not a scar that feels strange and new.”

During a moment, the windless night surrounded him, mute and empty. “You do not have to look at what you haven’t caused,” Hannibal said, pushing his shirt down, then the blanket over it. He reached down to fill their glasses again. 

The words felt dry on Will's lips. “Do you believe me if I say I didn’t know you loved me?” he said.

Hannibal poured the bourbon. There was no tremor to his hand, only a stiffness in his neck, as if he felt watched. “Would you have acted differently if you had known?”

“If I _had_ known, would you have changed anything?”

The crispness of the air held them both like a vivid tightness. “Pride is much like a chemical. It can burn if unsettled,” Hannibal said.

Will shifted. The alcohol didn’t loosen the knot in his throat. “Do you want me?”

There was a nearly unremarkable change in Hannibal’s stance. His eyes stopped looking at the fire and they focused a thousand miles away, over an ocean. “Does it matter?”

“I am asking exactly what I’m asking. There are no tangled forests and spiked traps underneath. You don’t have to search for them.”

Glancing down at their glasses, almost empty now, Hannibal said, “Either you wanted to be drunk to ask me, or you wanted me to be drunk when you asked it. Both suggest it has crossed your mind that some aspects of it should not be consensual.” 

Somewhere _into the flames, antlers and legs surfaced, part charred wood, part flashing embers_. Will said, “Do you want that?”

“I wanted you,” Hannibal said. Even if they _were a few feet from the fire, his feet were touched by the fire. Blanket and skin slowly turned to ashes._ “Nothing else.”

“Wanted.”

Hannibal tilted his head and blinked, _while he kept burning_. “I have you now.”

“And here we are. Both of us,” Will said, into his glass. He drank the rest. “Want-free.”

 _Eventually, the fire reached them both, eating through clothes and skin alike_ and Will closed his eyes. The bench’s wood was rough. Will thought he could fix it, make it softer, neater. 

Hannibal pulled his blanket tighter on his lap. Will felt both the heat and the pressure of the thick wool on him. He tried to unfeel the sensation of the noose around his neck, the one of heat coming from the inside.

“I know what I would burn,” Will said. He realized how tight his throat felt only when the words could barely come through.

A creaking of the bench as Hannibal placed his empty glass down, not moving to refill it. He winced as he sat back up. “There is some awe, I suppose, in discovering how much worth you can ascribe to something, knowing you will lose it.”

Will took the bottle and poured himself another glass. “I won’t lose it.”

Turning to Will, Hannibal framed his face, fingertips brushing the brown curls of hair. “You can’t, you’ve swallowed me,” he said.

A light rain had started to fall on them. Even with the fire, Will’s fingers had gotten cold. Hannibal stood and folded his blanket patiently, placing it on Will’s knees for further warmth. Then he wished him good night and went back inside.

 

* * *

 

The bourbon had left a haze around Hannibal's mind. Nothing more than a sway, but his body rocked on the waves of this lake. He heard the careful steps as they entered the room, but it took him a moment to open his eyes, haply in the night.

He saw Will in the darkness. Time flickered and suddenly, Hannibal wondered how long he had been there. The lines his body were slumped in the armchair in the corner of the room. “Will,” he said.

Will didn’t flinch, but tilted his head forward. He was awake. His motions seemed slower, he must have kept drinking. A few more glasses maybe. The bedroom was spacious, but Will still smelled of winter, frozen mud and burnt wood and smoke. Hannibal could barely make out his features, but Will’s thoughts seemed to hover over him, circling and searching for the proper landing. After a moment, his eyes focused, somewhere near Hannibal, vague and preying, all the same. “I love you,” Will said.

Hannibal stilled in bed and tried to capture the words. They eluded him. The memory of them would fade when he would wake in the morning. He went for the light.

Will held out a hand and stopped him. “I’ll get back to bed.”

The sheets pooled at Hannibal’s waist as he sat up, some moonlight catching in his chest, his hair, his shoulders. “You didn’t need to say it,” Hannibal said.

Will tilted his head, closed his eyes for a time, silent, caught in the feelings flooding the room. “Yet I did,” he said.

Then he got up and moved to the bed, swift, but with a distinct tilt to his step. He slipped under the sheets beside Hannibal. This close, Will smelled only of the fire and of bourbon. He lay on his left side, propped on his left elbow against the pillows, watching intently, as Hannibal let him, stripped to the flesh and below.

Hannibal thought of waiting for morning and memorizing the way the warmth of Will’s skin infiltrated the sheets and reached him, even if they did not touch.

“There are things you want,” Will said.

“Possession is vain.”

“And consumption is luxury.”

The pillow shifted as Hannibal turned his cheek into it, fingers stretching out on Will’s shirt, near the collarbones. The white of the silk pillowcase was almost blue. His skin was some infinite gray, like snow, frozen since too long.

Shapes and faces shifted before Will’s eyes, beneath the eyelids. He wondered how the little alcohol they had drunk had gotten to him. Or if anything would ever get to him anymore. “I would burn you. In the bonfire,” he said.

“What makes you think the flames would want me?”

Hannibal’s hand went to Will’s neck and hung over his cheek a moment. His thumb closed over Will’s ear. Will’s eyelids flickered shut. “I like to think I could be that fire,” he said.

Will’s hand went to Hannibal’s shoulder and remained there, kneading the flesh as if it could slip inside and curl and dig. “Fire is an abstract form of consumption,” Hannibal said. His voice was taut. Will moved forward and pressed their hips together, erections meeting through clothes. A mix of hard and soft, of skin and bone.

“There’s nothing abstract about this,” Will said. “This is more than fire.” He spoke against Hannibal’s lips. “More than blood.”

Firmly, Hannibal’s hand went to Will’s back. It pulled strongly enough that Will felt enveloped, waltzing and rolled into the waves of fire. Arms and chests met. Hannibal had brought Will atop him and parted his legs to let him be cradled in between. They breathed kisses into each other as their noses touched.

“What do you expect from me?”

“Only destruction,” Hannibal said.

His legs tangled with Hannibal’s, Will shifted, his arms on either side of Hannibal’s chest, their hands holding and letting go, stroking wrists and necks. “It isn’t precious.”

“It is rare,” Hannibal said. He twisted slightly to his side, trapping Will’s erection between his thighs. “It is glory.”

Pushing his cock in Hannibal’s hold, Will arched his back. 

Even in the darkness, Hannibal could see him perfectly now. Will’s mouth was agape, his eyes transfixed above. Only when he reached to cradle Will’s face with his hands, did the other man stop moving.

“Let me see it,” Will said. He knelt to pull back, taking Hannibal over him and reversing their positions. “The fire. Let me.”

Hannibal was astride Will now, with Will’s fingers stroking his cock unhurriedly. There was nothing that Will didn’t seem to revel in the sight of. The whites of his eyes shone above his trembling breathing. Hannibal’s hands clutched Will’s arms and he thought to crush them until the bones and muscles were soft and velvety, like a smooth wine. “There are wilder things than fire,” he said, touching their foreheads together.

Will kissed him. “Yes,” he said. “There’s you.” He leaned forward and took Hannibal’s cock in his mouth, sharply, once, the shape of it bringing the scar in his cheek to shine white, then sat back, lips glistening.

They weren’t images or desires that crossed his mind. It was a mix of smells and twists, most of them with his hands deep inside organs and blood. When he found it, the luscious gleam in Will’s eye must have mirrored his own.

Thoughts of savagery came with simplicity set in between. He brought Will slightly down into the pillows and moved higher on his chest. The light from the night outside was dim. It glowed in the closed curtains of the window. But the scar tissue of Will’s left-shoulder bullet wound caught it and distorted it into an iridescent glint. “I don’t remember my blood on you,” Will said, as Hannibal trailed his thumb over it.

“You saw right through my skin, Will.” Hannibal pressed his mouth to the scar. Under the skin, there was a mound of healed tissue he could take between his teeth.

Will breathed in sharply. Hannibal placed Will’s right arm close to his body, tucked against his ribs. Adjusting his hips, he slid his cock in the tight space between torso and arm. Even with the remaining slick from Will’s saliva, it felt like a hot burn.

Raptured, Will wound his right hand in Hannibal’s hair as he thrust slowly. The warmth and sweat spread from his armpit to his shoulder and neck.

It was quick and tense. After Hannibal came, he slid down and seized Will’s erection with his lips.

At the back of his throat, the taste of sperm mixed with remnants of bourbon.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Hannibal found Will outside. It was so early, the sky had barely begun to pale into dawn. Will warmed his fingers on a mug of tea. In the front yard, last night’s fire had died down. A thin column of smoke was twisting in the air. It became almost invisible as the sun started to rise.

“Come with me,” Will said. “To Greenville. I’ll show you where it happened.”

Hannibal swallowed and pulled his robe tighter around himself. “All that you are can be seen on you, Will. Places are occasions, not doors.”

“I’d just like to go there again,” Will said.

Hannibal shifted. Steam rose from Will’s cup of tea, not unlike smoke. He reached for it and disrupted the curls with his fingers. “To let me in,” he said.

Will nodded, unsteady.

As light filled the room, Hannibal caressed Will’s hair, pushing it back behind his ears. Will’s eyes gleamed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the HBB people for allowing this to happen! And the warmest thanks of all to [Mostlyawful](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mostlyawful/pseuds/Mostlyawful) ([sammehdraws](http://sammehdraws.tumblr.com/) on tumblr - go say hi!) for the [dazzling art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8100343) she paired with this fic. 
> 
> (I wanted to wait until I had something to post before answering the comments. *sigh* I won't do that again, cause obviously I can't post with reasonable timing anymore. My apologies to those of you this may have offended. You know I treasure your words. -- Although I do hope to be able to drop the whole rest of Incredulity on your heads ***relatively*** soon.)
> 
> On [tumblr](https://davantagedenuit.tumblr.com/) with love.


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